The nurse is in.

New nursing brain for high turnover areas

Do you use a nursing brain? I’ve always used a 5-patient brain and it’s worked really well for me. Specifically, it works really well when I have a constant patient load during the shift. But on the ortho floor I have a lot of days when I start out with 5 patients, discharge 4-5 of them, then get new patients throughout the shift. I was never able to reorganize my day once I started getting new admits. Hmph.

So to remedy that, I came up with a new brain I’m trying out. It has space for 8 patients, I don’t have to fill out lots of junk that I don’t need, but there’s plenty of space to organize the important things – abnormal lab values, med times, and I color in the heart icon if the patient is on tele. When I discharge a patient a single diagonal line goes through the patient’s box when I’ve done discharge teaching, gotten out their IV, and changed their dressings. When the patient has actually left the building and I’ve finished charting the discharge the other side of the big “X” is drawn. I use a highlighter to bring attention to things like a foley, PCA, accuchecks, etc. And the blank space for notes lets me write down what I need to remember for that patient. Wife’s name, note to call the doc about med reconciliation, or whatever. Download, edit, and use as you wish.